 |
During my senior year in high school, addiction broke me down and isolated me from my friends, family, hobbies and everything else valuable in my life.
Fortunately, in April 2011 I found a new way to live, thanks to my supportive parents and by embracing the local recovery community.
I attribute the gift of starting my recovery journey almost entirely to my family. My parents were neither completely detached nor too overbearing. So often I hear about the extremes of helicopter parents or parents who weren’t present at all. The key in my path to recovery was having my parents be somewhere in the middle.
That “middle” is different for everybody, of course, and I’m eternally grateful my parents found what that middle was for me. My parents realized I needed structure, but to not be controlling of that structure. They knew I needed to have fun in recovery, but to have it be with the right people in the right places. They knew how important school was to me and my recovery, but that I would need some help to get through it. Nothing was black and white; they always helped find the gray area.
My parents separated while I was in eighth grade, and that same week I got kicked out of the small school in Wilmington, DE where I thought I would graduate. It was nothing drug- or alcohol-related, but rather a series of unfortunate events that culminated in the decision to have me leave the school.
That trauma was enough of a catalyst to lead me to drugs and alcohol, even though addiction didn’t take over until my sophomore and junior years of high school. Through every step of my life, I never once doubted that my family would be there to support me no matter what happened.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment